Painting is one of the oldest and most important arts.
Since prehistoric times, artists have arranged paints on surfaces in
way that express their idea about people and the world. The paintings
that artists create have great value for humanity. They provide
people with both enjoyment and information.

People enjoy painting for many reasons. They may think a
painting in beautiful. People may like the colors that the painter
used or the way the artist arranged the paint on the surface. Some
paintings interest people because of the way the artist expresses
some human emotion, such as fear, grief, happiness, or love. Other
paintings are enjoyable because they skillfully portray nature. Even
paintings of such everyday scenes as people at work and play and of
such common objects as food and flowers can be a source of pleasure.

Paintings also teach. Some reveal what the artist felt
about important subject, including death, love, religion, and social
justice. Other paintings tell about the history of the period during
which they were created. They provide information about the custom,
goals, and interests of the people of past societies. Painting also
tell about such things as the building, clothing, and tools of the
past. Much of our knowledge about prehistoric and ancient times comes
from painting and other arts, because many early societies left few
or no written records. It would be hard to find a subject that no one
has ever tried to paint. Artists paint the things they see around
them-people, animals, nature, and nonliving objects. They also paint
dreamlike scenes that exist only in the imagination. An artist can
reach back into the past and paint a historical event, a religious
story, or a myth. Some artists paint pictures that show no clear
subject matter at all. Instead, they arrange the paint in some
abstract way that expresses feeling or ideas that are important to
them.

Since prehistoric times, many artists have painted the
subjects that were most important to their societies. For example,
religion was particularly important in Europe during the Middle Ages,
and most of the paintings created then were religious. A prehistoric
artist painted, the animal on a cave wall in France, about 15000 B.
C. The artist lived at a time when animals served as the main source
of food and clothing for human beings. The American artist Robert
Bechtle painted the picture of a man and his automobile, called 60
F-Bird. The automobile is the most important means of transportation
in modern American life. People have always been a favorite subject
of painters. Artists have shown people intheir paintings in many
different ways. All great paintings, regardless of subject matters,
share a common feature. They do more than just reproduce with paint
something that exists, existed, or can be imagined. They also
expresses the painter's special view about a subject. Many artists
turn to nature for their subject matter. They paint scenes called
landscapes and seascapes that they try to capture the many moods of
nature. Still-life are picture of objects. Still-life painters
usually make no attempt to tell a story or express an idea. Instead,
they are interested in the object themselves — their color, shape,
surface, and the space within or around them. Artists often find
their subject matter in the past. They paint pictures that record
real events or myths of long ago. Many such paintings are instead to
recall past deeds of glory or to teach a lesson. Many artists have
used paintings to express political and social beliefs and to protest
such things as war and poverty. Movements of social expression have
appeared in painting throughout history.

The way that painters arrange colors, forms, or lines is
called composition. Some painters use no recognizable subject matter.
Instead, they stress composition for its own sake. Piet Mondrian's
"Lozenge Composition in a Square" is an example.

Composition is also important in paintings that have
recognizable subject matter. Fintoiettos "Saint Mark Rescuing a
Slave" is as important for its composition as for the story it
tells. Fintoretto place each figure perfectly to direct attention
toward the floating figure of Saint Mark pointing to the slave on the
ground. Viewers can enjoy the skillful composition even if they do
not understand the story.

Many paintings have been created to decorate rooms or
buildings. The subject matter of most of these paintings is less
important than the painting's place within the total scheme of
decoration. For example, the Kaiseraal, a room in a place in
Wiirzbourg, Germany, has a number of outstanding paintings by
Giovanni Battista Piepolo. But these paintings are no more important
than the windows, columns, or imitation draperies in the room. Many
artists and craftworkers created these objects, and each object
became a part of the room's overall decoration. Paintings consist of
many artistic elements. The most important elements include (1)
color, (2) line, (3) mass, (4) space, and (5) texture. These artistic
elements are as important to a painter as words are to an author. By
stressing certain elements, a painter can make a picture easier to
understand or bring out some particular mood or theme. For example ,
an artist can combine to produce an intensely emotional feeling. The
same artistic elements can also be combined in a different way in
order to produce a feeling of peace and relaxation.Color can help an
artist tell a story, express an emotion, or- as in Picasso's
“Mandolin and Guitar” —created a composition, Picasso did not
color all his forms as they would appear in real life. Instead, he
used strong primary colors — such as blue, red, and yellow — in
the parts of balanced these colors with delicate black, brown, gray,
tan, and white colors. The result is pleasing composition created
largely by the painter's skillful arrangement of colors.

Line is the chief means by which most artists build up
the forms in their pictures. By combining lines of different lengths
and different directions, an artist makes the drawing a painting. In
" Two Acrobats With Dog", Picasso used lines to show the
edges of his figures. Some lines are thick and some are thin. The
artist emphasized line to make the viewer aware of the roundness of
the forms and the and the delicacy of the slender figures of the
young boys and the figure of the dog.

Mass allows an artist to express the feeling of weight
in a painting. Picasso created "Mother and Child"' largely
in terms of mass. The bulky, solid appearance of figures in the
painting impresses the viewer. The artist made the figure look as if
they are made of stone or some other heavy materials. By stressing
mass, Picasso made the figures seem like monuments that will last a
long time.

Space. By arranging lines, colors, and light and dark
areas in certain ways, painters can create an appearance of great
space-even though they really paint on a small, flat surface. An
artist can make an object look flat or solid, and either close or far
away. In some paintings, space plays just as important a part as the
solid forms. Picasso's “Seated Bather” shows a skillful use of
space. The openings between the bonelike forms are just as expensive
and interesting as the solid forms in the painting.

Texture refers to the appearance of the painting's
surface. The paint of a picture maybe thick and rough or thin and
smooth. In “Woman Weeping”, Picasso created a rough texture by
using thick strokes of paint. This texture adds to the painful
emotional feeling of the painting.

If to speak about techniques, we should start with
fresco painting. Fresco painting is a technique in which the artists
paints on a plastered wall while the plaster is still damp. Fresco
artists decorate both inside and outside walls. Their works
contribute greatly to the beauty of buildings and homes. Fresco
painting is especially well suited to decorating large walls in
churches, government buildings, and palaces. A fresco, unlike many
other painting techniques, has no glossy shining. A shine would make
a fresco difficult to see from certain angels. Fresco painting
reached its greatest popularity from the 1200"s through the
1500's. Italy was the center of fresco painting during that period.

Leading fresco painters included Giotto , Andrea
Mantegna, Masaccio, and Michelangelo. During the 1900's, Mexican
artists revised fresco painting. They included Jose Clemente Orozco
and Diego Rivera . Mexican artists decorated many public buildings
with large frescoes that show scenes from Mexican history.

Water color painting can be done in two major
techniques, (1) transparent water color and (2) gouache. Transparent
water color are paints made of pigments combined with a gum-Arabic
binder. An artist using this technique lightens the color by adding
water to them. In most other techniques, the artist adds white paint
to lighten colors. The viewer can see the support through a layer of
transparent water color. Gouache paint is also made with a gum arable
binder. But during the manufacturing process, a little white pigment
or chalk is added to make the paint opaque. Opaque means that the
viewer cannot see through a layer of the color. An artist using the
gouache technique makes the color lighter by adding white paint to
them. Must styles of modern transparent and gouache water color
painting grew out of techniques developed in England, France, and the
Netherlands during the 1700's and 1800's. But water color paints had
been used to decorate walls and ornamental objects in ancient Egypt
and Asia, and in Europe during the Middle Ages.

Encaustic painting involves the use of melted wax as the
binder. Pure beeswax is the best kind of wax for this purpose.
Encaustic painting was widely used in Greece as early as the 400's B.
C. But by about A. D. 800, the technique had been abandoned. During
the 1800's, artists attempted to use wax paints for outdoor murals.
Some painters of the 1900's have used the technique for easel
picture.

Pastels are colored chalk sticks. They are made of
pigment and a small amount of weak adhesive. Many artists who draw
especially well like to work in pastel because they can use the stick
like a pencil while producing brilliant effects of color.

Two French artists of the 1700's Jean Chardin and
Maurice Quentin de La Tour, made excellent pastel portraits.
Outstanding French artists of the 1800's, including Edouard Manet,
Jean Francais Millet, and Pierre Auguste Renoir, often worked in
pastel. They captured the visual effects of light and atmosphere in
pure pastel colors. Edgar Degas, another French artist of bather,
dancers, and people working . Degas's well drawn, brilliantly colored
works proved that pastel could be a major painting technique.

Tempera is a technique in which egg yolk is used as the
binder. Most egg tempera paintings are done on wood.

A painter usually applies tempera in fine crisp strokes
with a painted brush. The paint dries almost immediately into a thin,
water-resistant coasting. Tempera dries quickly, and so the
brushstrokes do not blend easily. Normally, the artist develops the
tones of the picture through a series of thin strokes laid over each
other. In a tempera painting, most shapes are sharp and clear. Tones
are bright, and details are exact and strong.

An artist should not applies tempera paint too thickly
because the paint cracks when applied in heavy layers. Tempera
paintings require protection against dirt and scratching, and so he
artist usually applies a coat of vanish to the finished picture.

The tempera technique achieved its greatest popularity
between 1200 and 1500 in Europe. Beautiful tempera pictures were
painted during the 1200's and 1300's in Siena, Italy, by Duccio di
Buoninsegna and Simone Martini. Several modern American artists have
used tempera skillfully. They include Ben Shahn, Mark Tobey, and
Andrew Wyeth.

Oil paint is made by mixing powdered pigments with a
binder of vegetable oil. Linseed oil is the most common binder.
Certain feature of oil paint make it popular with artists who want to
show the natural appearance of the world around them. Oil paint-even
when applied thickly - does not crack so easily as does water paint
or egg tempera. As a result, the painter can apply oil paint in
varying thicknesses to produce a wide range of textures. Each artist
develops his or her own method of working with oil paint.

Oil painting first became popular in Europe during the
1500's. By the 1700's it had become the most common painting
technique. It remains the technique preferred by many artists today.

No one knows when people first painted pictures.
Scholars date the oldest known paintings at about 20,000 B. C. The
high quality of these works suggests that people began to paint
pictures much earlier.

Egyptian painting. The ancient Egyptians began painting
about 5.000 years ago. They developed one of the first definite
traditions in the history of the art. Egyptian artists painted on the
walls of temples and palaces, but much of their finest work appears
in tombs. Like other early peoples, the Egyptians believed that art
was a magical way of transporting things of this world into a world
people entered after death. Egyptian artists decorated tombs with
frescoes showing persons and objects related to the life of the dead.
Egyptian artists painted according to strict rules that hardly
changed for thousands of years. The figures they drew look stiff. The
heads of people in the painting always face sideways. The shoulders
and body face to the front, and the feet paint to the side. Important
persons are larger than the other people.

Artists painted tombs only for the benefit of the gods
and the souls of the dead. The tombs were scaled and beautifully
colored frescoes were intended never again to be seen.

Cretan painting. About 3000 B. C. - while Egyptian
civilization was flourishing - another great civilization was
developing on the island of Crete. The Cretans, a seafaring people,
often came into contact with the Egyptians. The Cretans adopted some
elements of Egyptians art, including the Egyptian way of drawing
human figure. But the Cretan style

did not have the stiffness of the Egyptian style Cretan
paintings are lively, and the figures in them seem to float and
dance. More important. Cretan painters, unlike the Egyptians, were
interested in life in this world. They used paintings to decorate
buildings instead of concealing the paintings in tombs. Thus, Cretan
art became a bridge between Egyptian art, which emphasized death, and
ancient Greek and Roman art, which dealt with life.

Greek painting. The ancient Greeks made greater
achievements in architecture and sculpture than in painting. Nearly
all surviving Greek paintings appear on pottery. The Greeks made
beautifully shaped pottery and painted it with scenes from everyday
life and from stories about their gods and heroes.

Greek artists of the late 600's and the 500's B. C.
Painted black figures on naturally red pottery. This method became
known as the black figure style. A painter named Exekias was a master
of the style. About 530 B. C. Greek artists developed the red figure
style, the reverse of the black figure style. These artists painted
the background of their pottery in black and let natural red show
through to form the figures. The red figure painters, like the Greek
sculptors of the same period, created extremely lifelike figures.
This “ideal style” became the chief quality of the so-called
classical art of the Greek and Romans.

Greek sculptors made realistic figures and indicated
emotion by facial expression or bodily pose. This was the style
copied by Roman sculptors and relearned by Renaissance sculptors. It
served as the basic style for European sculpture until the late
1800's. The Greeks thought of their gods as being like people, and
sculptors portrayed gods as people in such works as the “Greek God
Poseidon” or “Zeus”. They showed people as godlike beings. The
earliest important classical sculpture appeared on the Temple of Zeus
at Olympia. The high point of the classical style is generally
considered to be the sculptures on the Parthenon in Athens.
Sculptures decorated sarcophagi with reliefs. Portrait sculpture also
began during this period.

We know more about Roman painting than Greek painting
because a wider selection of Roman paintings has survived. Roman
artist

were strongly influenced by the Greeks. They gave the
figures in their paintings the same lifelike quality. Roman artists
added to the reality of their works by painting convincing illusions
of depth, shade, shadow and reflected light. Some of the best
examples of Roman painting have been Found in the ruins of the city
of Pompeii. The house of two brothers named Vettius contains frescoes
portraying stories about lxion, a mythical hero. These frescoes
consist of elaborately designed painted panels.

Roman sculptures. The finest work of Roman sculptors was
probably their mass-produced portrait sculpture. To meet the large
demand for portrait busts, the Romans developed a set of standard
symbols for hair, eyes, nose, and mouth. A student learned to carve
by reproducing these details accurately, rather than by copying a
living model. Art schools used this method of teaching until as
recently as the 1940's.

The Romans were deeply religious, and many reliefs from
altars show ceremonies or symbolic stories. A famous example of such
sculpture is the Ara Pacis (Altar of Peace) in Rome.

The Romans also were particularly interested in showing
historical events, a theme that the Greeks had avoided. Reliefs of
commemorative arches and columns tell the story of complete military
campaigns. The best-known columns are Trojan’s Column and the
Column of Marcus Aureoles.

Oriental painting, the painting of Asia, has three main
branches — Indian, Chinese, and Islamic.

Indian painting, is primarily religious art. Indian
painters create their works to help the people communicate with their
gods. Their main subject include gods and stories about the gods and
holy people. Indian artists paint on manuscripts of holy texts, on
banners and wallhangings, and on walls. They direct all the elements
of their pictures toward increasing the religious experience of the
viewer. Every object and figure in their paintings has a specific
meaning. Gods are usually portrayed as red and fierce in order to
show their great power. Their many arms let them display all the
symbols of their power at once. The god appears warlike and full of
motion, which shows that he can conquer his enemies. The artists do
not attempt to show gods and the other figures in real space. All the
figures seem to float in a heavenly atmosphere. They are seated on
clouds or lotus plants. Clouds and a ring of flame — which
symbolize the universe — encircle the chief figure and fill the
background with swirling movements and color.

Chines painting. The major Chinese religions al stressed
a love of nature. Partly as a result, tree major kinds of subject
matter dominate

Chinese painting. They are birds and flowers; figures;
and landscapes of the countryside, mountains, and sea. Chinese
landscape painters tried to create a feeling of union between the
human spirit and the energy of the wind. water, mist, and mountains.
Such pictures express the Chinese belief that there is an inner
harmony and balance among all things in the world. Chinese painters
use black ink that could produce different tones and a brush that
could many kinds of lines. Artists created many paintings in black
ink only. Even when they added color, the ink drawing remained the
basis of the design. The Chinese paid more attention to the
brushstrokes than to the subject matter. Most surviving Chinese
painting are painted on silk or an absorbent paper. Many artists
painted on walls or a large screens. All these paintings require
special study. The artist intended their works to be examined only if
the viewer had time to enjoy them without distraction.

In China, painters, like poets and scholars, were
considered persons of learning and wisdom. Chinese paintings were
closely associated with poetry. Many Chinese paintings combine
certain objects, such as a particular bird or flower, because the
objects are associated with a famous poem.

Chinese painters produced many great landscapes painted
on long scrolls. The viewer unrolls the scroll slowly from right to
left, revealing a continuous succession of scenes of the countryside.
These hand scrolls are in a uniquely Chinese art form. Appreciation
of them requires much patience and thought.

Xia Gui and Ma Yuan created a style of idealized
landscapes that greatly influenced Chinese and Japanese painting.

Human figures were also important in Chinese painting.
Artists painted portraits of both real and imaginary people. They
painted scenes that illustrate stories and historical subjects. Many
paintings show the elegant, refined life at court. Some of these
pictures show furniture and decorations in great detail. Others have
a plain background. All these paintings are remarkable for a delicacy
of line.

Japanese painting is included in the tradition of
Chinese painting because Japan's art was greatly influenced by
China's. However, the Japanese changed the Chinese styles to suit
their own taste. The Japanese use of the color and abstract design
had transformed the art into a new form of expression. Japanese
artists were interested in the time and place in which they lived.
Their paintings show their fondness for storytelling as well as for
art that appeals to the emotions and the senses.

From the 1500's to the 1800's, Japanese artists painted
in a style that strongly emphasized color and design. These artists
were called decorators. The decorators omitted detail from their
pictures and stressed only outlines. They applied their color evenly
with no shading. The decorators often added gold leaf to their
paintings for an effect of luxury. The finest decorative paintings
were pictures of nature, particularly animals, flowers, and
landscapes.

Throughout most of its history, Japanese painting has
reflected the taste of the upper classes. But the Japanese style most
familiar in the West is an art of the common people. The style is
called ukiyo-e (the floating world). The floating world is a world of
pleasure and entertainment, and of great actors and beautiful women.

Islamic painting is primarily the creation of beautiful
books through calligraphy and illustration. Calligraphers copied
texts in elegant handwriting, and artists added illustration to
increase the beauty of the books. Calligraphers copied the texts of
Koran, the Islamic holy book, on pages that were then covered with
gold leaf. Early Islamic artists decorated the pages with complicated
patterns because their religion prohibited the making of images of
human beings and animals. However, as time passed, many Islamic
artists — especially those living in Persia - began painting human
and animal figures.

In addition to the Koran, Persian artists illustrated
collections of fables, histories, love poems, and scientific works.
These illustrations have jewel — like color, the most important
element in Islamic painting. The artists did not try to portray the
real world, but instead tried to create a luxurious, ideal setting to
delight the eye and simulate the imagination.

Medieval painting refers to most of the art produced in
Europe during a period of about 100 years. This period began with the
fall of the Roman Empire in the AD 300's and 400's and ended with the
beginning of the Renaissance in the 1300's. Almost all medieval
artists dealt with religious subjects, they developed several styles.
One of these styles, called Byzantine, became the most important
tradition among Christian artists of eastern Europe and the Near
East.

Byzantine painting. Starting in the AD 300's, eastern
Christians gradually separated from the western Christians, who were
ruled by the pope in Rome. Eastern Christians art is called Byzantine
because the religion centered in the city of Byzantium (now Istanbul,
Turkey). By the 500's, the Byzantine artists had developed a special
style of religious painting. The Byzantine painting style has
remained largely unchanged to the present day. Byzantine pictures
portray colorful but unlifelike figures that stand for religious
ideas rather than flash-and-blood people. The artists were not
interested to techniques that would help show the world as it was.
They generally ignored perspective and gave their works a flat look.
They made wide use of symbols in their works in order to tell
stories.

The CJTeat age of Russian Art.

When Russia received Christianity from Byzantium in the
late 1000's, an important part of the culture transplanted onto
Russian soil was the early medieval art that Byzantium had brought to
a level of great sophistication. For the Orthodox Church, icons
(images of holy personages or events) where an integral part of
worship and theology, testifying to the reality of the incarnation.
Characteristically icons were painted in tempera on wooden panels,
though they may be of other materials, and the fresco wall paintings
(occasionally mosaics) with which early churches were always adorned
are equally “iconic”.

After the Tatar conquest building activity, and with it
painting, revived gradually during the 1400's. First Novgorod, then
increasingly Moscow were the major patrons; but the political
fragmentation of the time led to productive artistic activity in many
smaller places. Contacts will] the Mediterranean world revived:
Serbian painters worked in Novgord; the learned Greek Theophanes (in
Russian Feofan) worked both there and in Moscow. But home-bred
talents made this the great age of Russian painting; notably the monk
Andrew Rublyov (c. 1370-1430). He is first recorded as one of the
painters of the Moscow Annunciation Cathedral in 1405. He was
evidently aware of new stylistic currents in Byzantine art of the
time — and also conveys the Hellenistic impetus behind Byzantine
art generally. The famous so-called “01d Testament Trinity was
painted in memory of St. Sergius when the Trinity Monastery was
restored after the Tatar raid of 1408. The scene is the Hospitality
of Abraham: three pilgrims, recognized as angles, are given a meal by
Abraham and Sarah.

Few icons survive from Kievan Russia: those that do
mostly display a static unclutted monumentality. In the early Tatar
period Russian art, thrown back on its own resources, shows a “folk”
quality, with expressive, plastic distortions and simplifications of
figure stye and clear, unnaturalistic colors. When Russian culture
revived in the late 1400's its art was able to draw on both these
aspects of its past, but also on renewed international contacts,
above all with Byzantium. There were certainly also contacts with the
South Slavs, but none can be proved with Western Europe. The best
painters of the late medieval Orthodox lands seem to have sought a
tender expressivity, though in the case of Rublyov combined with
gravitas and a pure and monumental line. There seems to be a truly
classical impulse at work here, whether looking back to the nobility
of Kievan art or through recent Byzantine models to a sort of refined
Hellenistic legacy. The painters of the 1500's seemed to share a
common interest in unnaturalistic but often dramatic effects of
light, notably in scenes such as the Transfiguration and the Descent
into Hell, it is reasonable to see in this an effect of Hesychast
mysticism.

Icon painters had singular opportunities in the early 15
00's as a result of the development of the iconostasis, a wooden
screen closing off the altar area of a church and clad with tiers of
icons, often life-Osize or greater. The central tier (the “Deisis”)
represented holy figures interceding with Christ on behalf of the
worshipers. The iconostasis as a gallery of representations of saints
compares with the great sculpted portals of Western medieval
cathedrals, while the opening and closing of its central doors
enhance the drama of the liturgy. The impact of the whole ambience is
increased by the frescoes covering all interior walls and ceilings.
Good examples of these survive, though fragmentarily in Novgorod
(World War II took a heavy toll here), and include paintings by
Theophanes. There are wall paintings by Rublyov in the Dormition
Cathedral at Vladimir. A small number of very fine illuminated
gospels books of the period have been attributed to the circles of
both artists.

Beginning about 1400, European painting flourished as
never before. This era of great painting took place during the period
of history called the Renaissance. The Renaissance began in Italy
about 1300 and spread northward. By 1600, it had effected nearly all
Europe.

One very important aspect of the Renaissance was a great
revival of interest in the art and literature of ancient Rome. This
revival had an enormous influence on painting. Religious subject
matter remained important. But artists included elements of Roman
architecture in their pictures. The Italian city of Florence and the
northern Europe — an region of Flanders became the major centers of
painting in the early Renaissance.

Sandro Botticelli, one of the greatest Florentine
masters, became the leading interpreter of Neoplatonism. Neoplatonism
was a complicated religious theory that combined ancient mythology,
Greek philosophy, and Christianity to explain God, beauty, and truth.
Botticelli's “Birth of Venus” is based on a Greek myth. The myth
tells how Venus, the goddess of beauty and love, was born in the sea
and was blown to shore on a shell by the winds. The style and
perspective of the picture do not follow the sculptural style of
ancient Greece. In his attempt to express spiritual qualities,
Botticelli returned to an almost medieval style. Venus' body curves
in such a way that she seems much like a paper doll floating in the
air. The design of the picture is more flat and decorative than most
Italian art.

Leonardo da Vinci was probably the greatest artist of
the 1400's. His portrait “Mona Lisa” and his religious scene “the
Last Supper” rank among the most famous pictures ever painted.

Leonardo, as he is almost always called, was trained to
e a painter. But he became one of the most versatile geniuses in
history. His interests and achievements spread into an astonishing
variety of fields, such as anatomy, astronomy, botany, and geology.
Leonardo's paintings made him famous, and his more graceful approach
marked the beginning of the High Renaissance Style.

Leonardo finished painting “The Last Supper” about
1497. He created the famous scene on a wall of the dining hall in the
monastery of Santa Maria delle Grazie. It shows Christ and his 12
apostles just after Jesus has announced that one of the them will
betray him. Leonardo changed the traditional arrangement of the
figures from a line of 13 figures to several small groups. Each
apostle responds in a different way to Christ's announcement. Jesus
sits in the center of the scene, apart from the other figures
Leonardo's composition creates a more active and centralized design
than earlier artists had achieved.

When painting “The Last Supper”, Leonardo rejected
the fresco technique normally used for wall paintings. An artist who
uses this fresco method must work quickly. But Leonardo wanted to
paint slowly, revise his work, and use shadows — all of which would
have been impossible in fresco painting. He developed a new
techniques that involved coating the wall with a compound he had
created. But the compound, which was supposed to hold in place and
protect it from moisture. Did not work. Soon after Leonardo completed
the picture, the paint began to flake away. “The Last Supper”
still exists, but in poor condition.

“The Mona Lisa” is a portrait of Lisa del Giacondo,
the young wife of a Florentine merchant. It is often called “La
Gioconda”. “The Mona Lisa” became famous because of the
mysterious smile of the subject. Actually, Leonardo showed the
woman's face moving into or out of a smile. He arranged her folded
hands so that the figure formed a pyramid design. Leonardo's
technique solved a problem that had faced earlier portrait painters.
These artists had shown only the head and upper part of the body, and
the picture seemed to cut off the subject at the cheat. Leonardo's
placement of the hands of the “Mona Lisa” gave the woman a more
complete, natural appearance. On the whole, Leonardo's paintings are
remarkable for their delicate use of Shadow and their sense of
motion.

By the early 1500's, Rome had replaced Florence as the
chief center of Italian painting. The popes lived in Rome, and they
spent great sums on art to make Rome the most glorious city of the
Christian world. In addition, two of the greatest artists in history
- Raphael and Michelangelo - worked there. The style of painting that
centered in Rome during the early 1500's is called High Renaissance.
It combined elements of many earlier styles, including graceful
figures, classical Roman realism, and linear perspective. The works
of Raphael and Michelangelo best show the High Renaissance style of
painting.

Raphael painted balanced, harmonious designs that
express a calm, noble way of life. This style appealed to Italians of
the early 1500's. During this period, the Roman Catholic Church was
sure of its supreme position in Europe, and leading Italians were
convinced that the great classical Roman civilization had been reborn
and was flourishing in Italy.

Raphael was strongly influenced by Leonardo da Vinces
style of arranging figures to form a pyramid. He used this
compositional form often in a series of paintings of the Madonna (the
Virgin Mary). In these paintings Madonna is as graceful as a goddess.
Her manner suggests the Renaissance ideal that a good woman should be
faithful, humble, and pure.

Raphael's “School of Athens” covers one wall of the
Stanza (a room in the pope's private quarters in the Vatican). He
used the actual arch in the wall to frame the painting. Three painted
arches serve as a background for the ancient Greek philosophers and
scientists in the front of the scene. In the center, beneath the
arches, stand Plato and Aristotle, the leading philosophers. Raphael
grouped the main representatives of the schools of Greek philosophy
and science in casual but carefully organized arrangements. The scene
expresses the sense of clarity, space, and proportion for which
Raphael became famous.

Mickelangelo worked as a sculptor until the pope ordered
him to decorate the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican.
"The Creation of Adam" is one frexo from the chapel
ceiling. It shows God moving on a cloud among many angels. He extends
a figures toward Adam raises his arm to receive the spark of life.
Michelangelo's human figures are more sculptural and solidlooking
than Raphael's. Raphael's figures seem happier and more graceful, but
not so herac and powerful as Mickelangelo's.

Venetian painting. Venice ranked second only to Rome as
a center of Italian art during the 1500's. Venice was a commercial
city that handled much of the trade between Europe and the East.
Venetian painters showed the influence of Eastern art in their
fascination with color. Their works also show a trend away from
interest in the hard outline and sculptural and heroic figures found
in the paintings of Florence and Rome. Venetian painters tried to
please and relax the viewers rather than inspire them to noble deeds.
Giorgione, Titian and Tintoretto were the most famous. They all were
neasters of oil painting.

The texture of the paint itself interested some Venetian
artists more than the subject matter. These painters brushed on their
paint in thick strokes. Sometimes they seem almost to have painted
their pictures in sweeping brushstrokes. These pictures are often
full of motion and action, and invite the viewer to an imaginary
world where he can relax in the presence of beautiful women and
lovely nature.

The Counter Reformation, the Roman Catholic Church's
response to the Protestant Reformation, and the rise of nationalism
in many European countries helped bring about a major painting style
- baroque, Baroque and a related style, rococo, dominated European
painting during the 1600's and 1700's. The Reformation forced the
Roman Catholic Church to organize against Protestantism. Church
officials wanted to use art in order to spread Catholic ideas and
teachings. The church told artists that they should create religious
paintings that would be realistic and easy to understand and - most
importantly - would inspire religious emotional reactions in viewers.
These qualities formed the basic of the baroque painting style.

Peter Paul Rubens of Flanders was one of the greatest of
the painters who adopted the baroque style. He skillfully combined
realism and classical style. Rubens was also influenced by the
Venetian technique of painting in thick oils.

The “Elevation of the Cross” shows Rubens' baroque
style. This painting is a highly emotional religious scene. Several
half-naked bodies strain to lift Jesus into the cross as spectators
look on in sorrow and fear. Rubens intensified the feeling of action
and struggle by drawing his composition in diagonal lines. He further
heightened the picture's lights appeal by painting the highlights in
thick masses of pigment and the dark colors in semitransparent
brownish glazes. The painting shows Rubens' remarkable ability in
drawing the studio and employed many assistants, of whom Anton Van
Dyck was the most famous. Diego Velkazquez, who painted at the
Spanish court, was another master of baroque. Both Van Dyck and
Velazquez gained their greatest fame as portrait painters. Their
portraits showed rulers in aristocratic poses. Such portraits were
intended to display the vertues and dignity of the rulers. This type
of elegant portrait is called a state portrait, and became popular
during the 1600's. Anyhow, Velazquez' portraits seem more like
personal pictures from a family album than paintings advertising the
rulers.

Dutch painting. By the late 1600's, the Netherlands had
become one of the world's major commercial and colonial powers. As
the country gained wealth, the Dutch people became interested in
luxury goods, including works of art. They liked almost any subject
that

reminded them of their own comfortable middle-class
lives. Dutch painters developed a distinct style during the baroque
period. Many Dutch artists specialized in painting specific subjects,
such as domestic scenes or tavern scenes. Painting that deals with
such ordinary, everyday subjects is called genre painting.

Jan Vermeer probably ranks as the greatest Dutch genre
painter of the 1600's. Vermeer and other Dutch genre artists painted
small pictures, most of which had smooth, glazed surfaces. Vermeer, a
master of painting interior scenes, usually portrayed women working
at quiet household tasks. His art is particularly noted for its
treatment of sunlight as it floods into a room or falls on objects.

Rococo was a painting style that developed out of
baroque. Rococo artists gave their paintings the decorative quality
of baroque. But they painted most of their pictures on a smaller
scale than did the baroque painters. Much baroque painting was
energetic and heroic. Rococo painting communicated a sense of
relaxation. It also was light-hearted and had none of the seriousness
of baroque painting. Antone Watteau and Honore Fragonard are the most
famous rococo artists.

Neo-classicism was a movement in painting which
reflected political changes in Europe. The French Revolution, which
began in 1789, stressed the virtues of Roman civilization. These
virtues included discipline and high moral principles. Neo-classical
artists helped educate the French people in the goals of the new
government. They painted inspirational scenes from Roman history to
create a feeling of patriotism. They are Jacques Louis David and Jean
Auguste Dominique of France.

Romanticism was a reaction against the neo-classical
emphasis on balanced, orderly pictures. Romantic paintings expressed
the imagination and emotions of the artists. The painters replaced
the clean, bright colors and harmonious compositors of neo-classicism
with scenes of violent activity dramatized by vigorous brushstrokes,
rich colors, and deep shadows.

Two English painters - John Constable and Joseph M. W.
Turner -made important contributions to romanticism. Constable was a
master of landscape painting. He developed a style of rough
brushstrokes, and broken color to catch the effected of lights in the
air, trees bent in the wind, and pond surfaces moved by a breeze. In
his works he tried to capture in oil paintings the fresh quality of
water color sketches.

Turner was increasingly concerned with the effects of
color. In his late works color became one dazzling swirl of paint on
the canvas. The influence of Constable and Turner appeared during the
late 1800"s in the works of the French impressionists.

Realism. As neo-classicism and romanticism declined , a
new movement - realism - developed in France. Guctave Courbet became
the first great master of realistic painting. Courbet painted
landscapes, but his vision of nature was not so idealized as that of
other painters. He recorded the world around him so sharply that many
of his works were considered social protests. In one painting, for
example, he portrayed an old man and a youth in the agonizing work of
breaking rocks with hammers. The artist implied that something is
wrong with a society that allows people to spend their lives at such
labor. The neo-classicists called Courbet's paintings low and vulgar.
But Courbet's works helped change the course of art. The paintings
were based on the artist's honest. Unsentimental observations of life
around him. From Courbet's time to the present day, many painters
have adopted his approach.

The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was an English art and
literary movement founded in 1848. The leading painters of the
movement were William Holman Hunt, Sir John Everett, Millais, and
Dante Gabriel Rossetti. The Pre-Raphaelite painters stood apart from
the major art movements of their century. They wanted to return to
what they believed was the purity and innocence of painting before
Raphael. Most Pre-Raphaelite art has a strong moral message through
religious paintings.

Edward Manet was a French artist who revolutionized
painting in the mid-1800's. He developed a new approach to art. He
believed that painting do not have to express messages or portray
emotions. Manet was chiefly interested in painting beautiful
pictures. To him, beauty resulted from a combination of brushstrokes,
colors, patterns, and tones. Since Manet's time, most painters have
emphasized the picture itself, rather than its storytelling function.
His "Luncheon on the Grass" illustrates lack of concern for
story.

Impressionism was developed by a group of French
painters who did their major work between about 1870 and 1910. The
impressionists included Claude Manet, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and
Edgar Degas. Like Manet, the impressionists, they chose to paint
scenes from everyday life, including buildings, landscapes, people,
and scenes of city traffic. Most of the people in their pictures were
ordinary middle-class city dwellers -like the painters themselves.

The impressionists developed a revolutionary painting
style. They based it on the fact that nature changes continually.
Leaves move in the wind, light transforms the appearance of object,
reflections alter color and form. As the viewer moves, the
perspective of what is seen changes. The impressionists tried to
create painting that capture ever - changing reality at a particular
moment - much as a camera does.

Postimpressionism described a group of artists who
attempted in various ways to extend the visual language of painting
beyond impressionism. The most influential postimpressionists were
Paul Cezanne, Paul Gauguin, and Vincent van Gogh. All were French
except van Gogh, who was Dutch . Unlike the impressionists, who
emphasized light, Cezanne stressed form and mass. The distortion in
his pictures add force to the composition and give the subject an
appearance of permanence and strength. Gauguin's pictures are highly
decorative. Gauguin's pictures are highly decorative. Gauguin
stressed flat color, strong patterns, unshaded shapes, and curved
lines. He constantly searched for purity and simplicity in life. His
search led him to the South Seas, where he settled on the island of
Tahiti. Like Gauguin, van Gogh wanted to express his innermost
feelings through his art. He believed he could achieve this goal
through the use of brilliant color and violent brushstrokes. He
applied his oil colors directly from the tube. without mixing them.
The result was an art of passionate intensity. Artists of the 1900's
have continued the search for new approaches to painting that
characterized the work of the impressionists and postimpressionists.
Many art movements appeared during the 1900's. Each lasted only a few
years but added to the richness and variety of modern art. They are
fauvism, cubism, futurism, expressionism, dadaism, surrealism, etc.
As time passed, painters of the 1900's increasingly emphasized purely
visual impact rather than recognizable subject matter or
storytelling.

Some art critics say that too much of today's painting
is concerned only with originality and novelty. These critics agree
that artists should discard traditions that no longer meet their
needs. But they point out that most great advances in style and
technique were achieved because artists believed they needed new
methods to express beliefs or ideas. Sometimes artists strive only to
create original painting styles. But originality for its own sake
becomes boring unless the painting has qualities that help it remain
significant and interesting after its novelty has worn off.

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